Obama Pitches Bipartisanship Before Election

After being grounded for three days by superstorm Sandy, President Barack Obama was back on the campaign trail Thursday. He was greeted with a flood of endorsements from several key Repubublicans and Republican leaning media outlets.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

With his city picking up the pieces left by Sandy, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg used the spotlight today to make a high-profile endorsement. President Obama gets his vote for a second term. Bloomberg singled out the president's leadership on climate change.

SIEGEL: With a handful of days before the election, both candidates are stressing their willingness to work across party lines. As NPR's Scott Horsley reports, Bloomberg's endorsement certainly helps Mr. Obama's bipartisan credentials.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Hello, Wisconsin.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: President Obama had all the trappings of commander in chief this morning as he stepped off Air Force One wearing a leather flight jacket. He'd just gotten off the telephone with governors who are wrestling with storm damage. He told the crowd of more than 2,000 in Green Bay that while Americans have been awed by the destructive power of Hurricane Sandy, they've also been inspired by the way the country has responded.

OBAMA: There are no Democrats or Republicans during a storm. There are just fellow Americans.

HORSLEY: That idea that we're all in this together, whatever our party, has been a central feature of the Obama brand ever since he burst on the national scene eight years ago. It was reinforced by Mayor Bloomberg's endorsement today, by kind words from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie yesterday, and it's amplified again in a new campaign ad in which former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served in Republican administrations, renews his endorsement of Mr. Obama.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAMPAIGN AD)

COLIN POWELL: When he took over, we were in one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to the Depression. And I saw over the next several years, stabilization come back in the financial community. Housing is starting to pick up. The president saved the auto industry.

HORSLEY: Chrysler just reported its best October sales in five years. Consumer confidence hit a four-year high today. And tomorrow's jobs report is expected to show another month of slow but steady private sector growth. Mr. Obama told supporters in Wisconsin the economy is on the mend, though he acknowledge there's unfinished business, saying that's why he wants a second term.

OBAMA: Our fight goes on because we know this nation cannot succeed without a growing, thriving middle class and strong, sturdy ladders into the middle class.

HORSLEY: The president accused GOP rival Mitt Romney of using all his talents as a salesman to repackage standard Republican orthodoxy of tax cuts and reduced regulation as positive change. While Mr. Obama promised to compromise with politicians of any stripe who support what he calls a common sense agenda, he vowed not to back down in his battles with lawmakers for whom he says obstruction is a strategy aimed at returning to power.

OBAMA: In other words, their bet is on cynicism. But, Wisconsin, my bet is on you.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: My bet is on the decency and good sense of the American people because despite all the resistance, despite all the setbacks, we've won some great fights. And I've never lost sight of the vision we share.

HORSLEY: This, then, is Mr. Obama's closing argument heading into the final week of his often bitter campaign: an effort to reconnect with the inspirational and inclusive message that he ran on four years ago, while giving no quarter in the hard-nosed partisan fight for 2012. Scott Horsley, NPR News, traveling with the president.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (right), D-Ohio, debates his Republican challenger, Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel, at the City Club in Cleveland on Oct. 15.

Tony Dejak/AP

Most of the attention heading into Election Day may be on the presidential race, but the stakes are also high in the battle for the U.S. Senate, where there are close contests in about a dozen states.

According to an NPR analysis of Kantar Media CMAG data, outside groups are spending more than $100 million blanketing the airwaves. This won't come as a surprise if you live in a state with a competitive Senate race.

Take Ohio, the Senate race with the most TV ad spending. As of last Saturday, broadcast stations had aired more than 64,000 ads, but the majority didn't come from the candidates or the parties — they came from outside groups.

Conservative groups such as Crossroads GPS and the Club for Growth have both run ads criticizing Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent. The National Education Association's PAC, the NEA Fund, has aired ads attacking the Republican candidate, Josh Mandel.

According to the Kantar data, groups supporting Mandel have run four times more ads than those backing Brown.

"We are being significantly outspent," says Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "What we've seen really over the last year is an unprecedented amount of money, largely being spent by a dozen billionaires from around the country who are willing to spend just about anything in order to win."

In reality, it's hard to know where the money is coming from.

On the Republican side in Ohio, more than 95 percent of the independent TV ad spending has come from groups not required to disclose the identities of their donors. This includes Crossroads GPS, the biggest spender in Ohio and in Senate contests nationwide. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a not-so-distant second.

"We're up there. That's good. I'd be disappointed if we weren't," says Scott Reed, the chamber's senior political strategist.

As of last Saturday, the chamber had spent more than $5 million on TV ads in Ohio alone, one of 15 Senate races where its ads were on the air.

Reed describes the chamber's efforts this election year as "the largest, most aggressive voter-education campaign in our 100-year history."

He says the reason so much of this spending is coming from groups with secret donors is free speech. "The chamber is a 501(c)(6) organization that operates legally," Reed says. "We do not have to disclose our donors."

Many argue the Ohio Senate race wouldn't even be competitive without all of the outside spending to boost the Republican challenger.

On the airwaves, Mandel, Ohio's treasurer, spent only a third of the $18 million spent by these independent groups.

David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics and the father of the superPAC, isn't convinced. "The fact that a race may be competitive when it wasn't expected to be? I think we should be celebrating that," Keating says.

When it comes to TV spending by outside groups, the split has been far from even. Republican candidates have benefited more than twice as much as their Democratic counterparts.

In a majority of those races, like in Ohio, the Republican candidate's campaign was actually outspent by outside groups.

In Virginia, former Sen. George Allen has spent less than $3 million on TV, while the outside groups supporting him spent more than $14 million.

In contrast, just two of the 10 Democratic candidates were outspent on TV by outside groups that backed them.

And an even starker partisan divide? More than 80 percent of all the Republican outside money comes from secret donors. On the Democratic side, less than 10 percent of the money is secret.

But money isn't everything. Many political forecasters say they expect Democrats will maintain control of the Senate, something that a year ago seemed nearly impossible.

Cook Political Report's Jennifer Duffy says Republicans were hurt by a surprise retirement and controversial comments on rape by Senate candidates Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana.

"There is not a thing that millions of dollars of outside group advertising could have done to change those situations," Duffy says.

Still, every one of these groups would most likely say, it was worth the effort and the money no matter the outcome.

(CNN) -- With national polls and polls in many of the battleground states essentially tied just days before November 6, the winner of the presidential election is anybody's guess. So, by the numbers, here's a look at some offbeat predictors of presidential elections:

62.1 - Percent of sales of the President Obama "Chia" planter, as of October 23.

80 (4 out of 5) - Percent of Family Circle magazine Presidential Cookie Bake-off winners who became first lady after her husband won the election. (Cindy McCain was the one winner who was a loser.)

54 - Percent of the recipes in the Family Circle Presidential Cookie Bake-offs that include chocolate chips.

Costume doubles as election predictor

Kids predict election winner

Can coffee cups predict next president?

Squirrel is presidential prognosticator

16 - Elections in a row, from 1936 until 1996, where the incumbent party stayed in office if the Washington Redskins football team won at home in their last game before the election. (The so-called Redskins Rule didn't apply in 2000, 2004 and 2008.)

60 - Percent of sales received at the Spirit Halloween seasonal store for the President Barack Obama mask.

40 - Percent of sales received at the Spirit Halloween season story for the Mitt Romney mask.

8 out of 9 - Correct predictions of the winner by the General Cinema movie theaters' "StrawVote" polls from 1968 until 2000. The last year of the poll, moviegoers chose Al Gore to win.

16 - States, mostly in the upper Midwest and in the South, which are unable to participate in the "7-11" convenience store "7-Election" coffee cup poll, because there are no "7-11" stores there.

About Me

Actor, Casting Director, Director, Broadcaster, Writer, Singer, Artistic
Director, Dramatur, Producer, Professor, Coach, Husband, Grandfather, Marketing
Professional and life long student Art Lynch joined the staff of John Robert
Powers in 1999. Lynch is also an adjunct professor at the Community College of
Southern Nevada, the Morning Edition Weekend Host for Nevada Public Radio and
one of 67 individuals who represent 126,000 actors as a member of the Board of
Directors of the Screen Actors Guild. He is the past president of the Nevada
Branch of the Screen Actors Guild and of the Professional Audio/Visual Communications
Association. A resident of Nevada since 1984, Lynch has an MA in Communications
from UNLV and a BA in Theater, Speech and Mass Communications from the
University of Illinois, Chicago. He is currently pursuing post-graduate studies
in theater, education and the entertainment industry. Art Lynch studied and
practiced the craft of acting in Chicago and California before settling in
Nevada. With his wife Laura, Art owned and operated a successful marketing
company with national clientele. Art was personally responsible for casting and
directing over 1,000 commercials and industrials, as well as assisting on film
and television projects in many ways. His career also includes earning awards
as a wire service, magazine and broadcast journalist. He is most proud,
however, of his daughters. Ann is a PhD in neuroscience and Beth is the proud
mother of his grandchildren, Evan and Elijah.

Short Film Festival

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